Isla Vista shootings: Thousands turn out to mourn students killed in rampage

SANTA BARBARA -- For a long minute Tuesday, a 20,000-strong contingent of mourners fell into an eerie silence as they gathered to remember the six university students -- including three from the Bay Area -- killed by a self-professed misanthrope.

The only sounds were distant birds and the camera shutters of a massive media blitz, which could be heard from halfway across the football field at the UC Santa Barbara campus.

But it wasn't long before the group raised a collective voice in solidarity to decry gun violence with a chant of "Not one more."

"I saw my son in a dream last night," stated a letter penned by the parents of Cheng Yuan "James" Hong, a 20-year-old from San Jose who was studying computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara. "I know there has been a great injustice, and policy can be improved. My son said he can't be here to help anymore, but you can."

The letter was read by Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez was among those slain in the Friday night rampage. Since then, Martinez has been a vocal opponent of guns and while he said Tuesday that all families don't feel the same, statements he read from the Hong family as well as one from the parents of Weihan "David" Wang, 20, of Fremont, showed them to be aligning with the cause.

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Wang's parents expressed the importance of their sons death not being in vain.

"I am sure this will wake the power within America," read the note. "It's time to stop gun violence, and be free from fear."

Though Wang's family attended the memorial, they did not address the crowd, standing only briefly when Martinez mentioned their name.

The capacity crowd at Harder Stadium filled the 17,000 bleacher seats and an additional 1,800 placed on the grass. Those who arrived too late were content to sit on a patch of lawn for the service, which lasted for more than an hour and featured messages of hope and perseverance from top UC officials and religious leaders. They stressed that the message of the day isn't finding out why 22-year-old Elliot Rodger went on his rampage, but remembering those who were slain, including George Chen, a 19-year-old graduate of Leland High School in San Jose.

"It's important that in our grief, that we not lose sight of the lives we have gathered to remember," said UC President Janet Napolitano. "It's important that we do not let the arithmetic of this atrocity define them."

Memorial speakers talked about a student body that came together to support one another after Rodger fatally stabbed his roommates from San Jose and Wang, who was visiting from Fremont, before going on a shooting rampage in the university enclave of Isla Vista. Rodger then turned the gun on himself after exchanging gunfire with authorities.

As the victims were remembered in Santa Barbara, the killings continued to reverberate around the Bay Area.

At San Jose's Lynbrook High School where Hong graduated in 2012, Principal John Dwyer on Tuesday led a campuswide moment of silence as grief counselors prepared to offer support to students and teachers. Former classmate Samar Khan remembered Hong as "one of the kindest, most genuine people I have met."

Hong was entangled in a conflict with Rodger as recently as January, according to the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office. Rodger initiated a citizen's arrest of Hong after accusing him of stealing $22 worth of candles. Hong was booked and released, and on Tuesday, a person claiming to be a relative with access to Hong's Facebook account sought to clarify the episode.

According to the relative, Hong and Rodger were engaged in a petty argument where Rodger apparently took away his roommate's measuring cup out of annoyance over his cooking, and Hong retaliated by grabbing Rodger's candlesticks to force an immediate trade.

"In response, Elliot called the police," the relative wrote. "What kind of person would call the police for such a petty argument? ... However my family philosophy is to avoid conflicts as much as possible, and we also wanted to use this opportunity to teach James there are all kinds of people in the world that we would have to get along with. We encouraged James to pay the fine and not aggravate his roommate further."

Sophomore Victor Espinosa-Rosiles, of Oakland, said Tuesday that he met up with friends Friday night across the hall from Rodger's apartment, which was the site -- they later discovered -- of the first horrific crime scene. "That's what freaked us out, that we could have run into him on our way in and his way out," he said.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, reacted to the shooting by announcing plans Tuesday for a bill to create a "gun violence restraining order" system in which concerned relatives, intimate partners or friends can notify police about someone showing a propensity toward violence, so police can investigate and seek a judge's order to seize that person's firearms and prevent any purchases.

Current law lets that process start only when therapists notify police that a client is at risk of committing a violent act. Family members can call police, but if no crime has been committed and the individual doesn't meet criteria for an involuntary civil commitment to mental health treatment, there isn't anything police can do about that person's firearms.

After the memorial, students expressed hope that things would start settling down.

"We've had a lot of bad things happen this year," said Tyler Buron, a 22-year-old UCSB student, referring to the chaotic riot that happened during a spring break party. "Very few people are giving our town a bad reputation."

Richard Martinez, the father of Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, one of the victims of last week's deadly rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., holds up a sign given him by the parents of Weihan "David" Wang, of Fremont, that says, "Gone With the Wind." Martinez was the only family member of the victims to speak before the 20,000 people who attended the memorial at Harder Stadium. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)